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jpinpb.
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September 3, 2012 at 2:51 AM #751072September 3, 2012 at 2:51 AM #751073
CA renter
ParticipantMore about the “privatization” movement that wants to take over public assets and revenue streams:
“A Bill for Backroom Deals “For Any Amount”
The Walker proposal, as introduced in his budget “repair” bill, expressly states that, notwithstanding some other laws, his administration:may sell any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under [previously controlling law].
(Emphasis added.)
The legal rules for selling the public’s assets that this provision would effectively nullify appear to include those that:
require public bids;
reserve the right of the government to reject bids;
require that any property sold be subject to property taxes;
require that the fair market value of the property to be sold be publicly disclosed;
require at least 14 days for a public commission to review any proposed sale; and
require notification to the legislature in writing of the proposed sale.
(Section 13.48(14).) It would also wipe out the uniform procedures requiring a determination of whether a private contract can be performed “more economically or efficiently” than under state ownership (Section 16.705). It would even moot rules preventing the approval of utility operations that would increase “costs” to consumers without increasing “value” (Section 196.49 (3)).Key Pipeline Rules Would Be Voided under Walker’s Proposal
Notably, one of the provisions Walker’s no-bid proposal would also void is a state law preventing a public utility furnishing gas to the public from altering the plant to connect it to a different pipeline from the previously kind of fuel, unless the public utility commission certified that doing so is necessary for the public interest and convenience (Section 196.49).”http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/02/10080/koch-denies-interest-no-bid-deals-opens-new-lobby-shop
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“But there are limits on conventional municipal debt and yet the sale of public assets is largely unchecked, she wrote. As a form of debt, Roin contends, privatization costs governments more than conventional debt.
It’s a provocative argument as Emanuel considers privatizing other city services and public property. The mayor isn’t the only one. Under pressure to raise revenues and balance budgets, states and municipalities around the country are studying whether to sell public assets or monetize user fees such as car registrations or hunting licenses.
Roin isn’t an expert on privatization. She was a tax lawyer in private practice, and much of her academic research focuses on federal taxation. She’s been a professor at the University of Chicago Law School since 1998.
But an enormous amount of what tax lawyers do is change the form of transactions without changing their economic substance in order to get better tax results. Her background sparked her curiosity about Chicago’s parking meter deal announced in 2008.
Richard Daley, Emanuel’s predecessor, leased the parking meters for 75 years for $1.15 billion to private investment funds controlled by New York-based investment bank Morgan Stanley. Daley had earlier accepted $1.83 billion to lease the skyway.
The parking meter deal, which entitled the concessionaire to all future meter revenues, included substantial rate hikes.
Roin told the Tribune she doesn’t mind paying more for parking but was annoyed by newspaper articles and politicians describing the upfront payments as “windfalls.” The lease of the parking meters and skyway are just the present value of what would have been future tax revenue, Roin said.
The only economic difference between the parking meter deal and a conventional municipal bond is the “contingent” amount of interest payments in the lease transaction, Roin said. Because there is no stated interest rate in a privatization transaction, Roin looked at the rate of return that the parking meter concessionaire expects to earn. She found that the estimates were 10 to 14 percent.
How are those “savings” working out for you?
September 3, 2012 at 2:57 AM #751074Participant[quote=paramount][quote=CA renter] I can show you thread after thread where these idiots have had their asses handed to them by those of us who actually spin the subject and can back up our arguments with MORE SPIN.
[/quote]
Car, I guess public employee unions can own the spin, but not the facts.
And the fact is, California public employee unions are bankrupting California cities and the state, and it’s not due to prop 13, it’s due to the excessive high cost of gov’t workers on the public dole due to the political power of their beholden politicians.
Even Willie Brown knows this as a fact.[/quote]
Bullshit!
The pension costs for California are ~3-5% of the budget! The number of CalPERS retirees in that infamous “$100K club”? ~2% of CalPERS retirees earn $100K or more, and that includes all of the high-level administrators, etc.
You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, Paramount, just like all the other posters who base their opinons on talking points from Fox News, etc.
Get informed.
BTW, how many of the billions of dollars in bonds (most of that going to PRIVATE entities who routinely rip off the government) did you vote for over the years, Paramount? Think that might affect our budget?
September 3, 2012 at 3:00 AM #751075paramount
Participant6 Figure Meter Maids
September 3, 2012 at 3:23 AM #751076ParticipantAs for your ignorant statement about Prop 13:
Businesses Benefit
It’s one of the initiative’s ironies that business people, who opposed the measure in 1978, have become its biggest beneficiaries. In Los Angeles County, where a quarter of the state’s $4.38 trillion in assessed property value is located, commercial and apartment buildings represented 60 percent of the tax rolls in 1975, while single-family homes accounted for 40 percent. Today that ratio is almost reversed.
In the late 1970s, tax-strapped homeowners were the driving force behind Proposition 13. Jarvis led five attempts to gather enough signatures to put the measure on the statewide ballot and finally succeeded, over the objections of Democrat Jerry Brown, 73, the governor then and now.
In the year after the measure passed, property-levy collections dropped 52 percent to $4.9 billion from $10.3 billion, according to the Board of Equalization, the state’s tax administrator.
Shifting Tax Base
Proposition 13 “effectively shifted the financing of portions of local government services and education from the property-tax base to the more volatile income- and sales-tax bases,” Standard & Poor’s said in a Sept. 8 report.
September 3, 2012 at 3:29 AM #751077Participant[quote=paramount]6 Figure Meter Maids
http://youtu.be/Ue7uBWgTrK8%5B/quote%5D
You’ve already had your ass handed to you on this topic as well. Want more?
[quote=CA renter][quote=paramount][quote=sdduuuude]Here’s some real hero-types !
Viva la union.
Why am I not surprised that meter maids make a 100k+ as a California Public Union Employee?
I do hear they are EXTREMELY honorable though…[/quote]
Paramount, either you need to firm up your reading comprehension skills, or you need to stop mistating things.
None of the people mentioned made $100K, much less $100K+. The two whose compensation was $92K-$93K were in *supervisory* positions, they were not “meter maids,” AND that included ALL of their compensation, including medical benefits and pension costs. Mind you, those pension costs tend to rise if their funds to meet the expected rate of return on their investments (some not sure who runs their pension fund and whether or not they use smoothing methods). Since last year was a bad year for most investors, there’s a good chance these costs are overstated, relative to historical norms.
…………..From the article:
“In this case, outsourcing parking-enforcement duties would benefit the taxpayers among Hermosa Beach’s population of slightly less than 20,000. For an example of how such a switch might work, Hermosa officials could travel about 45 miles south along the coast to Newport Beach, where the city successfully moved to outsource parking enforcement last year.
“We have seen increased revenues with the private company operating the meter program,” Newport Councilwoman Leslie Daigle said.
Since Newport made the move, the city “has seen a 24.4 percent increase in parking-meter revenues over last year and salary savings of approximately $500,000 from outsourcing parking meter operations,” according to Tara Finnigan, a spokeswoman for the city.
Privatizing parking meter duties also is a national trend, as detailed in a recent study by the libertarian Reason Foundation. Chicago and Indianapolis have had success with outsourcing parking enforcement, and other cities including New York, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, Memphis, Tenn., and Harrisburg, Pa., are considering privatization proposals.”
…
This means that the cost for parking in the city has gone UP, and that they are vigorously enforcing the parking laws, some of which are probably new in order to drive up revenue.
It looks like their revenue from parking fines and PD administration fines are about ~$2.6 million per year over the past ~5 years. If their revenue goes up about 24.4% with this privatization, that means they are taking in an additional $634,400.
So, it looks like the citizens are paying an additional ~$134,000/year to privatize the system. (This does assume that most of the revenues are coming from local citizens, and not tourists, but if you live in an area where most of the meters are used by local citizens, they are STILL paying for it.) Whether they are paying “taxes” or “fines” doesn’t really matter, the point is they are still paying for it.
What Newport Beach DID lose were some of the few decent-paying jobs with benefits for local citizens. Tell me…how did the citizens of Newport Beach fare in this deal?
Revenue numbers are line item# 5212 from here:
http://www.newportbeachca.gov/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=13908
……….
As far as the other cities being “successful” in their attempts to privatize, not sure about the other cities (not enough time to research right now), but this was a HUGE deal in Chicago, fraught with all sorts of fraud and abuse. Needless to say, the citizens of Chicago absolutely did NOT benefit from the privatization. Based on the fact that they are calling Chicago’s privatization debacle a “success” makes the rest of their claims dubious, IMHO.
“For $1.15 billion, paid upfront, the City Council approved a plan championed by then-Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2008 that privatized Chicago’s 36,000 meters for 75 years. In a deal that was widely criticized for selling taxpayers short, Chicago Parking Meters was given the right to keep all meter revenues until 2084. Drivers have since seen sharp increases in parking rates under the deal.
After leaving office a year ago, Daley, along with his former corporation counsel and two top press aides, went to work for Katten Muchin Rosenmann LLP, the law firm that handled the parking meter deal for the city.
Since the meter deal took effect, city officials have paid the parking meter company more than $2 million in what they call “true-up adjustments” to make up for parking spaces taken out of service.
The amount billed for those adjustments skyrocketed in the first nine months of the 2011 budget year, to $14 million — a sum Emanuel is refusing to pay. The company hasn’t submitted its claim for the last three months of the year yet.”
More:
“Aug. 9 (Bloomberg) — Chicago drivers will pay a Morgan Stanley-led partnership at least $11.6 billion to park at city meters over the next 75 years, 10 times what Mayor Richard Daley got when he leased the system to investors in 2008.
Morgan Stanley, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Allianz Capital Partners may earn a profit of $9.58 billion before interest, taxes and depreciation, according to documents for a $500 million private note sale by their Chicago Parking Meters LLC venture. That is equivalent to 80 cents per dollar of projected revenue. Standard Parking Corp., which runs 30,000 spaces at the city’s O’Hare and Midway airports, earned 4.84 cents on that basis last year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The deal illustrates how Wall Street banks, recipients of more than $300 billion in taxpayer bailouts in the worst credit collapse since the Great Depression, are profiting from helping states and cities close record recession-induced deficits by selling bonds and leasing public properties. Chicago gave up billions of dollars in revenue when it announced in 2008 that it leased Morgan Stanley its 36,000 parking meters, the third- largest U.S. system, for $1.15 billion to balance its budget, said Alderman Scott Waguespack.”
http://piggington.com/dang_those_overpaid_underworked_wastrel_firefighters_again
September 3, 2012 at 8:51 AM #751079blake
ParticipantSeptember 3, 2012 at 9:06 AM #751080EconProf
ParticipantCAR: You posted at 3:29 a.m. Get some sleep man. Its a holiday!
OK, we are supposed to bring data, but you are drowning us in it. And you are veering off topic.
The privatisation of Chicago’s parking meter revenues for the next 75 years was indeed a travesty, and us conservatives agree with you that it is another way to kick the can down the road. It is essentially credit card financing and is to be condemned. The then-mayor of Chicago, Daley, then went on to briefly become Obama’s Chief of Staff, but was pushed out because he was too business friendly and not liberal enough. That you show that he later went to work for the very law firm that benefited from the looting of Chicago’s parking meter revenues is indeed crony capitalism at its worst.
At last, something we can agree upon!September 3, 2012 at 5:49 PM #751086Participant[quote=EconProf]CAR: You posted at 3:29 a.m. Get some sleep man. Its a holiday!
OK, we are supposed to bring data, but you are drowning us in it. And you are veering off topic.
The privatisation of Chicago’s parking meter revenues for the next 75 years was indeed a travesty, and us conservatives agree with you that it is another way to kick the can down the road. It is essentially credit card financing and is to be condemned. The then-mayor of Chicago, Daley, then went on to briefly become Obama’s Chief of Staff, but was pushed out because he was too business friendly and not liberal enough. That you show that he later went to work for the very law firm that benefited from the looting of Chicago’s parking meter revenues is indeed crony capitalism at its worst.
At last, something we can agree upon![/quote]But it’s NOT off-topic, and that’s why I keep posting about it, even though people are (apparently) not paying attention. I can spend weeks posting links showing that the attacks on unions and pensions are coming from the “privatization” movement, NOT taxpayer advocates. I can spend weeks posting data that shows that privatization does not benefit citizens and does not provide more value for the money. I can spend weeks posting data that shows that the privatization of public assets and services leads to fewer good jobs for aspiring middle-class Americans.
I can show that the people who are behind the attacks on unions are the very same organizations and people who have decimated the private sector jobs that were once available to middle-class Americans, and that unions were fighting these greedy bastards every step of the way.
If someone can show evidence to the contrary, I would be exceedingly glad to see it. Just show some evidence that details how privatization has led to more and better-paying jobs for middle-class Americans (or even lower net costs!), and I will shut up.
Are there problems with the pension funds that resulted *directly* from the “financial crisis” that originated on Wall Street (including the PRIVATE SECTOR advisors and consultants, hedge funds, and private equity funds, etc. who were brought into CalPERS) — with help from the Federal Reserve, and from people in high levels of government who stood to benefit from deregulation and the credit casino? Yes! Can these problems be fixed in a legal and ethical way that does not try to scapegoat public sector workers for the problems caused by the financial sector? Yes!
Unions and boots-on-the-ground workers are NOT bankrupting anybody. The financial sector, some corporations, and some immoral cretins in legislative and regulatory offices have bankrupted this country. I will not stay silent for as long as these misdirected and uninformed attacks continue.
September 3, 2012 at 8:32 PM #751091ParticipantCar, I honestly don’t know of anyone who would agree with you who doesn’t work for the gov’t.
Parity is desperately needed, I have family to feed too.
September 4, 2012 at 12:50 AM #751095Participant[quote=paramount]Car, I honestly don’t know of anyone who would agree with you who doesn’t work for the gov’t.
Parity is desperately needed, I have family to feed too.[/quote]
And who do you think is responsible for decimating the middle class in America? The “capitlists” who have moved good jobs overseas and fought to bring in cheap labor, or the unions who fought against these moves?
edited to add…
If you want to know who stole your cheese, read this. Time to get informed about WHY private sector employees have lost so much ground and WHO is to blame for it (hint: it has nothing at all to do with unions or public sector workers).
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1
September 14, 2012 at 9:47 AM #751447jpinpb
ParticipantIt seems to me that what’s behind the anti-labor movement is privatization, companies for PROFIT. Does anyone have any evidence to show that privatization will lead to more value for money or better jobs?
I think I read somewhere that corporate profits are at a 50-year high, while unemployment is also at a 50-year high.
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